


a bad joke

by elinadsy



Category: Undertale (Video Game)
Genre: Angst, F/M, Gen, Soriel, Unhappy Ending, canon-compliant with Undertale more or less, non-compliant with delta rune, probably a little AU if only because i'm sure i've missed some important lore somewhere
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2018-11-07
Updated: 2018-11-07
Packaged: 2019-08-20 06:08:43
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 4,788
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/16550396
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/elinadsy/pseuds/elinadsy
Summary: Sans finds Toriel in every timeline, like the punchline to a bad joke nobody asked him to tell.





	a bad joke

The very first time, before Flowey understands his powers, before Frisk ever tumbles down into the midst of it all, Sans finds the door because his boredom overwhelms his ever-present desire to just sit down and take it all in. At this point, he’s taken in everything he can. A lot of trees, mainly. And snow. Day forty three of his part-part-time job as sentry, and, well. He doesn’t exactly have a captive audience for his painfully finite ice puns, and even more limited tree puns. 

 (It leafs a lot to be desired. There’s snow place better than home. Etcetera.)

 Sans drums his finger bones on the sentry hut’s counter and shortcuts to a standing position, cracking his bones as he stretches his arms over his head. Snowflakes are beginning to drift down from the darkness overhead, as lazy and slow as he feels, and Sans ambles off. In the extremely unlikely event that a human appears, they won’t be hard to hear. He’s the only monster for miles, and he’s got the keenest not-ears in the Underground. He can hear the lesser dog guards sniffing all the way from here, if he tries. 

 (He doesn’t try, but don’t tell Papyrus.)

 The trees are thick, the shadows long, but when he finds it, it’s unmissable; two enormous marble pillars next to an enormous purple wooden door, and the Delta Rune is carved deeply into it. 

 “Huh,” Sans says, stuffing his hands in his pockets. He looks up, looks up a long,  _ long _ way. Maybe he  _ should _ drink more milk. He could  _ milk _ his brother’s offers to buy him more of the stuff.

The door has to be at least ten feet tall, and the wood looks old, older than he is. Sans raps lightly at the door, if only because it’s there. It’s solid beneath his knuckle bones, as sturdy as if it was fresh cut. Well, a good, strong door needs a good strong knock, so Sans delivers the goods. The noise rings out across the clearing, and he can catch a hint of a muffled echo from the other side, which piques his interest as much as anything ever does, but he can’t see a lock or handle concealed or otherwise, and his magic can’t get it open. Something stronger than him, then. That cuts him to the bone. He’s pretty strong, after all.  But he hears footsteps and a distant, exasperated  _ nyeh _ , so Sans ‘cuts back to his station just in time for a disgruntled Papyrus to burst through the trees. As his brother tells him off for not actively patrolling, Sans wonders what the door could be for? 

 Who is it keeping in? Or keeping out? Whatever the answer, it’s a real  _ door- _ zy.

 (Not his best.)

 Except, in this first timeline, Sans doesn’t get to go to the door a second time; as he’s walking to the door the next day, Flowey discovers his ability to reload his SAVE, and, well. The rest  _ isn’t _ history.

 Yet.

 

-

 

The second time, Sans finds the door a week earlier than in the previous SAVE. He’s feeling unusually antsy, like something is nagging at him, like he planned to do something? But he doesn’t know what, like an inverse deja vu. Deja vu better do whatever it is vu were meant to do, Sans.

 (It’s too early for this feeling to disturb him; give it time. Seven more times, to be exact.)

 He visits the door six days in a row, and spends a good portion of his time regarding it with silent interest. It’s real, and wherever it leads is real too, but there’s a powerful ward around it, ancient magic beyond his ken, so for a while he just thinks about it. An interesting mystery to hold his attention, as heavy and cumbersome as it is.

 One day, he has a little too much at MMT Hotel before his sentry shift; even as he holds his microphone in one hand, he’s sipping at the good ketchup Mettaton puts aside for him and it’s got him smiling for  _ real, _ his jokes earnest and awful and even as people are booing and shouting, he can see them all smiling too. As he makes a joke about shitty MTT food (empty calories, more like MTT calories, amiright), he sees he’s gone overtime and thinks to himself Papyrus won’t like it if he’s late. Sans cuts the set short to general dissatisfaction, and before Metatton can burst from his dressing room in protest, Sans takes a wobbly, ketchup-dizzy step and-

  His shortcut spits him out in front of the door, rather than at his station. 

  Huh. This hasn’t happened for a long time. He laughs at himself, because that’s what he does best, and he’s struck by the lack of laughter following. Ah, right. He cut the set short. 

 Sans hums, ambling towards the door. He’s still in the mood for jokes, still in the mood to get a good laugh, and he just can’t waste a good door. It’s a door  _ made _ for knocking, after all.

 So, swaying a little precariously, he reaches out, and, well,  _ knocks. _

 A solid, loud knock, echoing on both sides of the doors.

“Knock knock,” he says aloud, and laughs to himself again at how absurd this is.

“Who’s there?” A woman asks timidly through the door, and Sans almost falls over, like his magic’s betrayed him and gravity has shunted him to the side.

“Dishes,” he says almost immediately though, because if there’s one thing Sans is, it’s quick to adjust.

 “Dishes who?” she asks, mildly confused even as he can hear a smile in her voice.

 “Dishes a  _ really _ bad joke,” Sans says, and is rewarded by a raucous laugh, a real belly acher, and he stares at the door in gratified disbelief.

 Well, he’s not going to waste a good audience.

 “Knock knock,” he tries again.

 “Who’s there?” she replies, a sweet tone in that deep voice of hers.

 “Cash.”

 “Cash who?”

 “No, thanks,” Sans says. “I prefer peanuts.”

 Again,  _ more _ laughter,  _ lovely _ laughter, as if he’s the funniest thing she’s ever heard. And he’s in a routine now, so he goes for gold. 

 “Knock knock,” Sans says once more.

 “Who’s there?”

 “Cereal.”

 “Cereal who?”

 “Cereal pleasure to meet you,” he says easily, and she’s  _ still _ laughing. There’s no reluctance in it, no  _ I’m smiling and I hate it _ , just unadulterated amusement and  _ joy _ , and even in his slightly less than sober state, Sans is… well, he’s feeling  _ something _ . 

 As any good comedian does, he lets her take a breath, lets the laughter settle down as he mentally rifles through his best knock knock jokes, but before he can slam out a  _ real _ doozy-  

 “Knock knock,” she says, her voice still timid, but full of hope and badly concealed laughter, and Sans is grinning. 

“Who’s there?” He asks.

“Old lady,” she replies, and her voice is shaking with mirth.

“Old lady who?” 

“I didn’t know you could yodel!” she exclaims, and is overcome by her own laughter. He’s laughing as well, a deep thing that rumbles out of his chest like a rusty tap, a laugh that’s so genuine and abrupt it takes him by surprise,  _ I didn’t know you could yodel _ ? What an awful, stupid,  _ wonderful _ joke-

 But they don’t get any further; Flowey, somewhere in the distance, erases this conversation among many the many others happening at this very moment, and everything starts again.

 

-

 

Third time is the charm in that Sans finds the door within the first day of his shift as sentry, a month past the SAVE point. But even as he’s puzzling over it-

 

-

 

Fourth time. Sans doesn’t know why, but that afternoon after he gets home from Grillby’s he says to Papyrus, “Hey, bro, do you know if Undyne still needs any more sentries?”

 “Of course!” Papyrus says loudly and enthusiastically. “There is a post open just near the other side of the snowy fields! I will ask her about it immediately!”

 (Sans barely has time to jerk the window open with a flick of gravity momentarily reversing before Papyrus leaps through it. He doesn’t want to have to not repair the window again.)  

 Restless, and he finds the door not even a day later.

 He still uses the  _ dishes _ joke. 

 She still laughs.

 One chance meeting turns to a second, Sans spending several hours making his knock knock jokes at intervals until finally, she hears him.

 “Who’s there?” he’s saying to himself. “Wa,” he continues-

 “Wa who?” she says, and the magic in his sternum contracts in surprise and delight.

 “What are  _ you _ so excited about?” he asks, and her laughter is as genuine and deeply sweet as he remembers it being.

 “Knock knock,” she says almost immediately.

 “Who’s there?” he asks.

 “Banana.”

 “Banana who?”

 “Knock knock.”

 “Who’s there?”

 “Banana.”

 This continues for several iterations past the point it should, but he’s grinning like an idiot the entire time because she can barely keep herself from laughing.

 “Knock knock,” she says for the fourth time.

 “Who’s there?”

 “Orange.”

 “Orange who?”

 “Orange you glad I didn’t say banana?” she says, and they’re both laughing, laughing,  _ laughing. _

 They continue along these lines for another hour, and when she tells him she has to go, the regret in her voice is palpable.

 “See you around,” he says, half-joking, trying to keep that smile in his voice. He’s still got another three hours of his shift left, three hours that aren’t  _ here _ .

 “That would be lovely,” she says. “I’m free at approximately three in the afternoon, if you are?”

 “Uh,” he says in surprise. 

 “I mean, of course, only if  _ you _ are free,” she says quickly. “You must be busy, my apologies-”

 “I’m not busy,” he says, and laughs. “Yeah. Three. See you then.”

 (But unfortunately, Sans’s shift finishes much earlier than it should. Much,  _ much _ earlier.)

 

-

 

The fifth and sixth times, Sans is consistently finding her within twenty four hours of the SAVE reload. The fifth time, two months go by without reload. The sixth, a whole year, a year that has Sans looking forward to three o’clock the moment he manages to pull himself from bed. He’s told every joke in his repertoire, has resorted to the Librarby’s meagre collection of joke books for extras. 

 But at this point, jokes aren’t all they talk about, of course. Sans tells her about Papyrus. He tells her about his other jobs. She tells him about her latest foray into baking. She tells him an interesting new snail factoid like it’s a gift she’s hand wrapped, delivering to him through the door that he hates and loves in equal measure. Sans has a theory it’s the  _ world _ she’s keeping out with that door. It’s been an unspoken thing, between them, their lack of names, but she calls him  _ Dishes _ , and he calls her  _ Old Lady _ , because of course, in this timeline as in every timeline, Sans has stuck with the classics. But it gets to a point when she’s kinda become the best part of his day and when he hears her voice he can’t stop smiling and one day, he finally,  _ finally _ decides he’s going to ask her name, because this is the first reload of many to come that Sans realises he’s in love with the woman he’s never seen. So after they get past their customary knock knock greeting, he takes a breath he doesn’t need, and-

 “Did you know,” she muses, “It’s been a year to the day since I heard you knocking on my door?”

 “Huh. Is that so?”

 (Like he doesn’t know. Of course he knows.)

 “Yes. It has… I was… I mean to say, that is, I am very happy you knocked on my door,” she says quietly, and he leans his skull back against said door. His SOUL is pounding in every inch of him, a tangible vibration. “I was very lonely,” she continues. “So thank you. Your jokes really  _ knocked _ me over.”

 “Sans,” he says, before he loses his nerve, because the pun sealed the deal.

 “I’m sorry?”

 “My name,” he says. “My name is Sans. And you’re very welcome.”

 A long silence that stretches on, and prickling discomfort and embarrassment is creeping up on him, why did he say that? He’s ruined it, he’s ruined it like he ruined everything-

-

 

Seventh time. Sans is blinking at his cup of sauce at Grillby’s, as he always is when Flowey reloads, the glass in his hand, when he suddenly stands up.

 Grillby gives him a questioning look as he wipes down the counter.

 “I have to go,” Sans says, and he does. 

 The moment he’s out of sight, he takes a ‘cut without knowing where he’s going, a dangerous thing to do at the best of times, slicing and hooking and pulling into the fabric of it all, searching for this  _ thing _ that’s tearing at him. He gets there, somehow, and there’s the door. The door that Sans has knocked on more times than he could count, but of course, he doesn’t know this. He doesn’t know why he’s so nervous, sweat beading on his bones, as he reaches forward and knocks, an instinct that’s more powerful than he can comprehend.

 “Knock knock,” he says aloud, and to him it feels like everything has suspended itself as he waits for a reply from somebody he doesn’t know is there. The silence stretches on, and then-

 “Who’s there?” she says, and then they’re both laughing, in relief, in confusion, and this is the timeline where Sans realises something is wrong.

 

-

 

Seven, eight, eleven, twenty three, thirty-

 It goes on and on and Sans wonders if his unique situation is the reason he seems to be the only one who’s always sitting at Grillby’s on edge, feeling like the magic of him has been scrambled and shifted off kilter, feeling like he needs to have his back to wood and a voice in his ears-

 He narrows it down, as Flowey reloads over and over, and at some point, he just…  _ knows _ .

 Someone is resetting reality, somehow, always back to this fixed point in Grillby’s. His magic feels strange and sick after every time; his magic lies in space and karma, and whatever’s doing this- this mockery of reshuffling the deck of cards, is the antithesis of him, a magic impersonal and born of time. 

 

-

 

 At some point during all of this, Sans just stops getting out of bed. What’s the point when he’s just going to be at Grillby’s once again? In one timeline, he doesn’t knock on the door, despite every piece of him saying  _ knock knock knock knock _ , and in that timeline, Sans feels even worse, like he isn’t just apathetic, but actively fighting every thing by doing nothing.

 The next timeline when he knocks on the door, he’s so relieved that his magic sparks in him, sends his SOUL fluttering, and he almost forgets to actually say the joke.

 

-

 

“Knock knock.”

“Haven.”

“Haven who?”

“Haven you had enough of these jokes yet?”

No, Sans thinks to himself, even as he laughs, a fierceness in him that takes him by surprise like he’s choking,  _ never. _

 

-

 

Reload after reload. Eighty three times Sans finds the door. His apathy is all consuming now, he can feel it eating at his magic every day; it takes everything he has to keep that lazy smile on his face, every inch of him, and he does it only so Papyrus doesn’t worry. His sets at MTT feel forced; his clothes never make it into the closet.

 There’s no point, he thinks, and then he finds her.

 At reload thirty seven, Sans starts his research. 

 At reload thirty nine, Sans meets Alphys. 

 At reload forty four, they actually get somewhere.

 

-

 

“ _ S-something’s wrong _ ,” Alphys says in a panic over the phone, and Sans cuts through space to find himself outside the door of her lab. She lets him in immediately and takes him to the top level of the lab.

 (Sans won’t see what’s beneath the lab until the fifty third reset.)

 “There’s an a-anomaly,” she continues, letting him sit down at her chair to look over the data churning out. “See? It’s the same way you take your shortcuts. Something is just… I-I… it’s like…”

 “It’s like they’re rewinding a video,” Sans says with a laugh that is only a laugh in the strictest sense of the word. “I’m filming really bad about this. What about you?”

 “T-that’s not all,” Alphys says, ignoring his pun; the next joke dies in his mouth when he opens the next report.

 “I-I mean,” Alphys says nervously. “Maybe I was wrong-”

 Sans sits back in his chair, lacing his finger bones over his stomach. 

 “S-Sans?”

 “How many times?”

 “Forty three,” she says faintly. 

 Her voice is so small. He thinks it might be because he can feel all the light has gone out of his eyes, concentrating down into his finger bones, a flight-or-fight response as laughable as it is useless.

 “You did good, Alphys,” he says, still staring at the screen. “Look, I- I better get going.”

 “But- what about the data? We can’t just- what if-!”

 “I’d say whatever we do doesn’t have much of an effect,” Sans says. “Look, Alphys, get some rest. Watch some anime. There isn’t much we can do about it.”

 “Where are you g-going?”

 “Got a three o’clock appointment,” he says. “And if I’m going to be rewound at any moment, there’s no place I’d rather be than there.”

 So he leaves, twists the space around him even as he’s sitting in her chair, and the door rushes to meet him.

 For a second, he wonders how many times he’s come to this door in total. How many times has he told the same joke? How many times has he looked forward to this part of the day?

 It’s a thought that blankets him, makes it difficult to move. 

 (What’s the point?)

 He raps on the door. 

 “Knock knock,” he whispers.

 “You’re early!” she says in surprise, sounding delighted, and he sits down in a slump.

 “I missed your jokes,” he says bluntly. “Can’t get through the day without them.”  

 “Oh,” she says. “That’s… very nice of you.”

 A pause.

 “Are you okay?” she asks hesitantly.

 “Yeah,” he says. “Aren’t you going to ask me who’s there?”

 “Oh! Yes, of course. Who’s there?” 

 “Cow say.”

 “Cow say who?”

 “No, cow say  _ moo,” _ Sans says, and despite everything, her laughter makes him grin. 

 (It’s the thirty sixth time he realises he’s fallen in love.)

 

-

 

Eighty three reloads. 

  It’s on the eighty third reload that everything changes, because instead of blinking into his cup of sauce at Grillby’s as his magic  _ shifts _ , he’s staring at the snow and the trees as he sits at his sentry station.

 It has been a year and a half since the eighty second reload. In this reload, he has spared Alphys from the final conclusion of their research. He and he alone knows that something out there has been changing timelines back and forward.

 So when he feels this  _ feeling _ , but he still knows just as much as he did a few minute ago, there’s something wrong. 

_ More _ wrong.

 But it’s nearly three o’clock, so he ‘cuts to the door, and as he raises his hand, trying to push everything aside, it’s three o’clock, it’s his favourite part of the day-  

 She’s  _ crying _ .

 It flares in him, he can feel his magic shooting through his eye, flaring and sparking off the door, and he instinctively tries to ‘cut through to the other side; he bounces off those wards as he did the first time he tried it, sending him several feet back in a flurry of snow, and then he sees the footprints leading from the door.

 “Lady?” he says, feeling utterly incompetent, useless, even more useless than ever-

 “Oh- oh,” she says, and she’s sobbing again. “Is it three o’clock already?”

 “What’s wrong?” he asks. What else can he do?

 “Nothing- I-” she lapses into silence for a few minutes, and then:

 “If a human- if a human were to come through this door,” she says, “Would you promise me something?” she asks, voice hitching, and there’s such desperation in the words.

  “Yes,” he says. “Anything.” If a human did this to her, he’ll hunt them down, he’ll-

  “Watch over them,” she tells him in a voice barely above a whisper. “Protect them.”

  Sans has direct orders from King Asgore himself. He has been a sentry here for almost two years. He knows that another human’s SOUL would release every monster in the Underground, would mean that finally, children who have never seen the sun would be able to feel its warmth on their faces-

 “Of course,” Sans tells her, and she starts crying again, and he wants to stay here with her, but it seems he has a promise to keep.

 “I’ll be back,” he tells her. “I promise.”

 “Thank you,” she murmurs, but Sans is already taking a step through the fabric of the world, and the words fall in empty air.

 

-

 

The kid reloads thirty eight times. Sans doesn’t know this, of course.

 But he’s there almost every step of the way, whether the kid knows it or not. He’s straining himself almost every minute of those six days the kid travels from the door all the way up to the castle, going against every grain of his fatalist fibre, multi-tasking like nothing else, because whether she knows it or not, his pun-partner has tipped him off to possibly the most important being to ever set foot in the Underground.

 He’s cautious of the kid, at first. It’s hard not to be; he’s heard the stories of the previous six, and he remembers what humans can be like. Remembers how volatile they can be. And it’s hard not to assume that the kid is the anomaly, the person that has wasted God knows how many days of Sans’s life.

 But he sees the kid leave weapons, sees them try on armour instead. He sees how the kid smiles at Papyrus, he sees how the kid manages to escape death with Undyne.  

 (He has the misfortune to have to step away during this section, caught maintaining one of his other jobs, and he hates that his first thought when he sees the kid shaking from exhaustion is  _ why don’t you just reset us? _ )

 And most importantly, he realises the kid’s SAVEs are different to the others. He doesn’t know how he knows this, but he does, instinctive like gravity slips through his fingers. Every SAVE reload the kid makes feels gentler, less like an abrupt shift and more like an adjustment, and that’s when Sans’ chest is even heavier than usual, the magic of him flickering and contracting in anxiousness, because the kid deserves to be free. The kid deserves to go  _ home _ .

 But the kid is just as trapped as them, Sans thinks, and he doesn’t know enough to  _ help _ . 

 (Sans does know enough; he knows of the amalgamates, he knows of the Dreemurr tragedy, he knows of Papyrus’s “echo” flower, but Sans can’t stop thinking about the crying woman behind that door and his usually quick mind doesn’t make the connection.)

 

-

 

Sans watches the kid walk towards him, the sound of their shoes echoing off the windows and tiles, and Sans explains to them, explains to them the magnitude of their magnanimity, and sends the kid to the King. Possibly to his death.

 He’s inclined to be fatalistic, but hope is a fantastic thing. So the moment the kid leaves the room, Sans is running out of the castle, clearing the Dreemurr wards as fast as he can, ripping through space and-

 He’s at the door. And it’s three o’clock. And it’s a beautiful day. And he has maybe five minutes to convince her to leave her sanctuary.

 Sans knocks on the door. He knocks loud. He knocks with the force of gravity, and the resounding noise sends lesser avian monsters flapping out of the trees.

 “Knock knock,” he says loudly, hoping, begging, that she’ll be there. 

 (It’s the longest moment of his life. All eighty four reloads of it.)

 “Who is it?”

 “It’s me,” Sans says. “And you need to come with me. It’d be ice to finally meet you.”

 “Excuse me?”

 “The human needs you,” he says, cutting to the chase.

 “You told me you would protect them!” she says, and he’s never, ever, heard her angry like this. “You  _ promised!” _

__  “Yeah,” he nods, grimacing. “But they need you.”

  “They  _ left _ .”

  “Everyone does at some point,” Sans tells her. “But that doesn’t mean they can’t come back, right?”

  A long silence again, and then-

  The door cracks along a seam invisible to the eye, fire magic that spits and crackles warm and painless along him, magic that brushes along him, a magic familiar to him and every other monster in the kingdom-

  “Heh,” he says. “This explains a lot, actually.”

  Because Queen Toriel stands before him, all six feet four of her, looking at him with eyes that are blazing red fire, and Sans is more than a little in love with her. He’s only ever seen her in the old paintings. They don’t do her justice.

 She’s… awesome. In the oldest sense. In the terrible sense. In the wonderful sense.

 “The name’s Sans,” he says. “It’s nice to finally meet you, Your Majesty.”

 She huffs. “I haven’t been a queen for a very long time.”

 “Tori, then,” he says. “You have a Tori-bble sense of humor, by the way.”

 “And  _ your _ sans of humor is even worse,” she replies, and there’s a singular soft second where they laugh, but, well, there’s no time for that. Papyrus and Undyne should have already dragged Alphys out of her lab by now.

 “We have to go,” he says.

 She nods solemnly, her proud face ready for battle, and she takes his hand. Her hand dwarfs his, of course, strong fingers that could probably rip him in half, claws that could rend his bones to dust. He can feel his magic shuddering along his cheekbones, feel it licking to life in him.

 Oh, he’s got it  _ bad. _

 “Hang on,” he says, and he  _ shifts _ them, steps them across miles and miles, and his foot comes down on the ground outside of the Dreemurr castle.

 “Goodness,” Toriel says, admirably unsurprised, and he doesn’t even need to explain the wards are stopping him; he feels her shatter them, so he takes another step, and-

 They’re there, and all hell breaks loose.

-

 

The last thing he sees is Toriel whimpering in pain, magic pulling her SOUL out of her, and he can feel his eye blazing and he can’t  _ help her _ , and then-

 Nothing. Sans ceases to exist, the atoms of him ripping apart and scattering and being blended. The pain is so great it circles back to feeling like nothing, and then somehow, someone is saying something to him, motions and shapes that  _ mean _ something, a joke-

_ Papyrus.  _

_  Toriel. _

__ And then, the barrier just… shatters. The magic snaps past them, and Sans manages to flick a hand down even as he flicks the other up, sending rock and crystal over them as he grounds them all, gravity holding them tight. Then it’s over, and they can see the sunlight that just barely hits the bottom of the tunnel leading to the outside world.

 “Wowie,” Papyrus says, the biggest understatement in history, and Sans loves his brother so much it makes him ache more than he already does. “The human did it! We’re free!”

 Sans watches them all, watches them all start climbing, and it’s only until Toriel lays a hand on his shoulder that he realises he’s waiting for it. For his magic to snap and flicker, for him to be back at Grillby’s all over again. 

 “Come on, Sans,” she says with a smile. “It’s been a long time since I felt the sun on my fur.”

 He can’t muster up a bad joke when she smiles at him like that.

 “Are you fur-real?” He asks, and she laughs.

 Well, maybe he can. But it doesn’t stop Sans from looking at her like she’s about to disappear, like time’s about to take everything from him. He doesn’t want to tell her this, he can’t do this to her, so he lets her take his hand and they walk up to the surface together, hand in hand, and Sans thinks to himself how he’d quite like her to kiss him.

_ But it can’t last, _ he thinks to himself, dread in his chest.

 

-

 

He’s right. 

It doesn’t.

**Author's Note:**

> I'm deep in Undertale hell 2 years too late lmfao!!!!! i played it when it came out but with all the hype for delta rune i thought i had better play it again to refresh myself and well i guess toby fox got me Fucked Up because it be like that sometimes I guess. 
> 
> I kiiiinda wanted to allude to Delta Rune but whatever i write will be so noncompliant with canon that i didn't bother too much.
> 
> (SPOILERS FOR DELTA RUNE but who else is loving the idea that Sans is actually a darkner?????? i literally Beg. I BEG.)
> 
> thanks for reading!!


End file.
